


All the Loose Ends

by FunnyWings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 13.23 coda, 13x23 Coda, Angst, Cas' POV, Episode: s13e23 Let the Good Times Roll, M/M, Michael's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 07:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14712032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunnyWings/pseuds/FunnyWings
Summary: What happens after the freeze frame.Excerpt:To his credit, Dean does not go quiet into that good night.His words, not Michael’s. It is surreally bizarre using a vessel that talks back. A vessel whose brain doesn’t melt like snow at a spring day’s first rays of sun. Dean Winchester’s internal monologue has long since passed quaint, but Michael doesn’t quiet the abuse buzzing at the back of his brain. Michael is an oncoming storm with the might of heaven behind him. He will not bend to a mosquito’s whines.





	All the Loose Ends

**Author's Note:**

> We got a super silly finale, so here's a super sad coda to offset that. Enjoy!

To his credit, Dean does not go quiet into that good night.

His words, not Michael’s. It is surreally bizarre using a vessel that talks back. A vessel whose brain doesn’t melt like snow at a spring day’s first rays of sun. Dean Winchester’s internal monologue has long since passed quaint, but Michael doesn’t quiet the abuse buzzing at the back of his brain. Michael is an oncoming storm with the might of heaven behind him. He will not bend to a mosquito’s whines.

He walks unnoticed among men, breathing in the acrid pollution of Chicago streets. To think that men would challenge his right to save them when they wore their sins as a second coat, unthinking in their complicity. Already this world is marching towards its inevitable end, and there are those that would have the audacity to question Michael’s quest to set it to rights? He is not vain like his brother. He does not desire worship or love or even justice. He demands only purity.

“Suck my fucking dick, you bastard,” Dean howls at him in the back of his mind. Despite himself, Michael is put out. Dean truly threw him off his rhythm of thought. “That’s right you son of a bitch, I’m still here, and I am never going to stop fucking shouting-”

Michael gives in. With a flick of his consciousness, he sends Dean’s mind to a place where the vessel might occupy himself with other matters. He can still hear the distant sounds of shouting, mixed in with screams as Dean’s mind relives his thirtieth year in hell. The year before he broke. Michael is nothing if not efficient, and he is certain that this will keep the vessel occupied for quite some time.

Satisfied, Michael returns to his thoughts. It is as he does so he suddenly becomes aware he has an appointment to keep. He turns down an alley and ambles towards his destination, content to take his time. There is nothing in this world that can stop him now.

**********

Theoretically, Cas should have been cut off ten drinks ago, at least according to bar policy. Foresight is a miraculous thing, and the five hundred dollars he had handed to the bartender on duty the moment he had arrived had done wonders for the service. He is well and truly wasted, and has no intention of reversing this state of affairs any time soon.

“So what’s your deal?” the girl behind the bar finally asks. Castiel looks up at her and taps his glass. She hesitates refilling the shot glass, and Cas places another hundred dollars on the counter. Guilty faced, she takes the money and pours the drink. Cas knows she’s studying to be a nurse, and she needs every dollar she can get. Cas vaguely remembers Claire telling him something about her friend wanting to be a nurse before she stopped calling him.

Cas used to care about that. Now the world had singled itself into a single choice, for once not even one of his own, and he is lost. He says as much to the girl, not a word slurred. If diction has not left him, at least lucidity has.

“Sounds like you got your heart broken,” she says, trying to read between the lines. Cas suspects she is used to reading a very different kind of book. People. Not that he’s people.

“Something like that,” Cas says. Theoretically he shouldn’t be here. He should be home, with his family and plotting to right a terrible wrong. But foresight is a wonderful thing, and Cas had already seen in his head how the conversation might go. And every time he never said a word of help, because there was no helping. There was no escape from the new world order, and Cas might have told Dean that if he thought for a second that deeply stubborn, and on occasion stupid, man would listen. Foresight, Cas supposed, is as useless as he is.

Sam Winchester shows up at last call. Cas wonders how many places he looked before Sam found him here. Or perhaps he had just tracked Cas’ phone again. Cas has neither the patience nor the will to ascertain the truth of the matter. He has committed himself to being very drunk, and if there is one thing he can say in his own favor, it is that when he commits he does not do so by halves.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Sam demands of him. Cas wonders if Sam hates him right now. It’s possible, despite everything else. But instead of feeling sad at the notion that he might have lost the respect of one of the few people he truly cares for… all Castiel feels is numb. Numb and empty. “Cas!”

“Sam,” Cas acknowledges at last. The bartender pretends she isn’t watching, and Cas suddenly feels very claustrophobic. Like the walls are closing in on him. He taps his glass again. “One more?” he asks the girl softly, trying to win sympathy with all the expertise of a bull in a china shop. Perhaps it’s his poor performance that wins pity, because she fills his glass again.

Sam knocks it out of his hands. The shot glass shatters on the floor and it’s loud. Everyone is staring now. Castiel feels peeled open, as raw and bloody a spectacle as a car crash. Sam Winchester doesn’t care.

“What are you doing?” he demands. “Dean needs you right now, and you’re just… you’re…”

“I’m giving up.”

Castiel says the words before he realizes they’re true. Something inside him collapses, a long weathered last thread snapping.

“You can’t give up.”

“Yes, I can,” says Cas. He’s angry now. He can feel the power of it surging under his skin, and no wonder Lucifer had been able to break past the warding when they were imprisoned on spite alone. Angels are warriors. Dean and Sam forgot that. Castiel forgot that. He was designed as a weapon of wrath, and if he is a late bloomer where the wrath is concerned… well, he certainly never managed to fit into heaven’s timelines correctly anyway. No reason that this would be any different. “Dean made his choice.”

“Michael betrayed him.”

“Do you really think Dean didn’t know that would happen?” Cas demands. Sam grits his teeth. It isn’t a denial. “He is a fool, but he isn’t an idiot.You can’t save him. I certainly can’t save him. So after much consideration, I have decided to give up.”

Sam takes a deep breath, while Cas puts another hundred dollars on the bar counter and asks for another drink. The girl pours it, trying to catch his eyes. Cas doesn’t let her.

When Cas looks back at Sam, there’s an entirely different expression on his face. It’s sympathetic and synthetic, and Cas is insulted Sam thinks it would work on him. He knows Sam is as angry and bewildered as he is. The difference between them is that Sam had long ago lost all perspective of what exactly constituted a fair fight. Sam is too good at winning against impossible odds to understand that sometimes impossible isn’t a starting point. It is as it’s definition says, and the only thing to do is to accept it. Or drink it away, as the case may be.

“We can get him back, Cas,” Sam says. It’s a soothing lie, one Sam only half believes, and Cas bites back a spiteful comment concerning Lucifer’s status as the Father of Lies and Sam’s long since rejected designation as the Devil’s true vessel. He isn’t angry with Sam, not really, and he doesn’t want to hurt him. He just wants everyone to go away.

“You can try,” Cas tells him after he has calmed himself. Finally it hits Sam that Cas means what he says. This isn’t a “funk” that can be cast aside. Cas has broken, and not for the first time. Cas thinks it might be the last time though, the final tear that can’t be mended.

Perhaps the girl behind the bar wasn’t as far off in her conclusions as Castiel had thought.

“You don’t understand-“

“No, Sam, you don’t understand,” Cas says. “I asked Dean to say no. I begged him not to say yes to Michael. It wasn’t enough. Why would it be enough now?”

“When you come to your senses… you know where I’ll be,” says Sam. “I’m going to fix this if I have to do it myself.”

“You’re only a man, Sam,” Cas says quietly. “Some things can’t be fixed.”

And so Sam marches off with righteous fire in his eyes, and Cas slumps, face buried in his hands, at the mercy of an existential crisis. Which one of us is divine and which is human, he thinks to himself. It isn’t funny, but he laughs anyway.

**********

Michael sits down at the middle table. The restaurant has been closed for years, and before switching hands three or four times in a series of shadier deals, it was a renowned deep dish pizza joint. He knows this only because his vessel recognizes the layout as familiar. Michael shoves Dean more firmly back into his nightmares.

When he looks up, a reaper is standing in front of him. Her hair hair is cropped close in a halo around her head, a false angel. Michael frowns at her. The summons he felt like… He had been expecting someone else.

“You’re not Death,” he says.

“And you’re not Dean Winchester,” she answers. “And yet…”

Michael feels his face pull down in a frown. He sits. Billie sits across from him.

“You called me here,” he says. “I did not have to come.”

“I think we have mutual goals that could be explored,” says Billie. “My hands are eternally tied when it comes to taking too active a role myself in returning balance. Yours on the other hand…”

“What are you asking for?”

“Death,” she says. “The walls between worlds are becoming thin. The tissue connecting us together, living, breathing Empty. It was sleeping, and it should stay sleeping. I’m asking for an offering.”

“I worship no one.”

“I’m not asking for worship,” Billie clarifies. “I’m asking for appeasement. It could swallow even you if it needs to. If it can’t sleep.”

The weight of Billie’s words weigh on Michael. He knows nothing of this connective tissue, this blankness between worlds, but he has enough half remembered glimpses of the untucked edges his father had smoothed over as he finished his Creation to feel fear. Those tears were jagged things, more terrifying than God himself.

“And if I were to agree to this proposition?” Michael asks.

“I recognize you as leader of heaven,” she says. “Death’s very own seal of approval.”

“There are no angels here to win over.”

“There are seven,” Billie corrects. “But I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about this world. It is trying to reject you. Eject you. I know you can feel it, the wrongness that is infecting you. You don’t belong here, but I can correct that. If you meet my demands, of course.”

Michael considers his options. She is not wrong, this glorified reaper who has usurped a position not meant for her. Even his vessel does not fit quite right. Dean Winchester is supposed to be an extension of himself, a weapon to be used with all the precision that a knight would a sword. And yet Michael can feel himself chafing against Dean’s token resistance. Straining.

“I accept your terms,” Michael says.

As they speak over the details, Michael’s focus is frequently drawn away from Billie’s words and intentions. It is all the fault of his vessel, who through his torture had begun humming. Michael listens in increasing annoyance as Dean begins to sing, off-key and nearly screaming. Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek is sung twelve times before Dean’s tongue has been cut out by his tormentor, a shadow of the demon known as Alistair. And yet Dean keeps singing. Already he knows with certainty that he is in a dream and can do as he pleases. Michael does not like it.

“One thing about Dean you should know,” Billie says, obviously taking more pleasure in Michael’s irritation than the unfeeling hand of Death should in any such matter. “He’s very adaptable.”

“I will keep it in mind,” Michael says, narrowing his eyes at her. “And if he should adapt in ways I can’t control?”

It’s an impossibility, but Michael asks anyway. Just to be certain.

“Death doesn’t choose sides, Michael,” she says. “This world needs a plague to set it right, and if you are not the tool to balance the universe, I will find another.”

“And if I don’t uphold my side of the deal?” Michael threatens. Death stares him down coolly. Her lips twitch into the ghost of a smile.

“The consequences will be… cosmic,” she says, looking into his eyes and past them. Something stirs in the vessel’s mind, but before Michael can catch the thread of his vessel’s thoughts, Billie is speaking again. “You can’t cheat Death, Michael. No one can. I know how I die, and it’s not at your hands. Even if it was, the mantle of my position would only be passed to another.”

Billie’s scythe appears in her hands. Michael pointedly does not reach for it, though he thinks of it. Consequences are not something he pays much mind to. He is the consequence, and he has no need to bow to Death, that lesser God who isn’t a God at all.

“Fate always finds a way,” Billie says. The next moment, she’s gone. She has no wings to fly with, but reapers make do with their limitations. And Michael will think of her as nothing but a reaper.

“Better not let her hear you say that,” Dean taunts from the back of his head. “She could take you any day of the week.”

Michael traps Dean in a memory in which John Winchester breaks his nose after coming home too drunk to realize it’s his son and not a monster trying to hoist him into a ratty motel bed. The memory is short and to be repeated ad nauseam. He feels a vindictive satisfaction with every crunch.

**********

Cas stumbles out of the bar, and is unsurprised to see Sam has indeed left him to his own devices. It makes sense. He has larger concerns, and if there roles were reversed, Castiel would do the same. Since their roles aren’t reversed, however, he is busy lamenting the hour or two it will take to be sober enough to drive somewhere he can buy more liquor.

Or he could go home. But Cas doesn’t want to think about that.

“You’re still here?” the bartender asks him a half hour later. Cas sits on the curb, contemplating the effort it would take to stand up and drunkenly sit in his truck instead of on the ground. He can’t get cold, and he isn't uncomfortable here, so he has firmly decided the answer is no. “I thought your friend was going to take you home.”

“He left,” he tells her. She frowns at him as though she’s trying to decide something. She must make her decision, because the next moment she is sitting next to him on the curb.

“Lainey,” she offers. Cas nods unenthusiastically, trying to discourage her. She presses on, nevertheless. “Are you okay?”

“Not in the slightest,” Cas says, too tired to lie. Lainey accepts this, letting him sit in silence for a few moments before speaking again.

“Look, I don’t normally do things like this when I’m not on-shift, but you pretty much singlehandedly paid my rent this month so… If you need someone to talk to or a ride home or something…”

“Shouldn’t you be going home?” Cas asks. “Your mother is going to worry.”

Lainey laughs a little.

“She always does,” she says. She frowns a moment later, obviously wondering how Castiel knew that. Cas doesn’t offer any explanation, and she doesn’t ask. There is fear where there wasn’t before, however, and Cas shrinks deeper into himself. “I’m going to…”

Cas nods.

“This guy who broke your heart or whatever, I didn’t really understand what was going on,” Lainey says before she goes. “Kick his ass for me, alright? Figuratively, I mean. Don’t actually… yeah. I hope it sorts itself out.”

Cas waits until Lainey’s car has driven off before he breaks down. There’s something very pathetic and human about crying drunkenly on a curb on a Thursday night. Angels were made for wrath, once upon a time, Castiel reminds himself. He sobs all the harder for the reminder.

**********BEFORE**********

“You can’t do this,” Cas says, stepping in front of Dean. “Dean, there are things you can’t come back from. We’ll find another way.”

“Yeah, what exactly?” Dean asks.

“We can… we’ll call Rowena. She might have seen a spell in the grimoire while she was trying to keep the rift open-“

“We don’t have time!” Dean shouts. Cas refuses to move from between him and Michael. As thought that mattered. As though Dean couldn’t say yes any damn time he pleased, and Cas be damned too. And yet… “Look, Cas, I need your support on this because-“

Dean cut himself off, looking back at Michael watching the both of them.

“Give us a minute,” he says, pulling Cas into the hallway.

“He can still hear us,” Cas says dully. Dean raises an eyebrow and Cas concedes the point. There isn’t a place in the bunker they can go where Michael won’t here them. It’s the illusion of privacy if nothing else. “What?”

“If things go south,” he says, swallowing hard. “Look, Cas, I don’t want to have to ask you to do this but- Michael can’t stay a piece on the board.”

Dean tries not to feel small, but the way Cas is glaring at him is making it hard. And this is a hard enough choice to make already. He wants to fucking scream, and seeing Cas look at him like that is doing a number on his head. If there were any other way… but there isn’t, and time is already running out.

“What are you asking me?” Cas says, his voice flat.

“Jack will get his powers back. So when the time comes, make damn sure he kills Michael. Whether I’m in there or not,” Dean says. “The kid isn’t going to want to do it, and Sam sure as hell won’t tell him to. I need you to do this for me.”

And Cas looks fucking destroyed.

“This is the second time you’ve asked me to kill you,” Cas says. Dean almost laughs, because yeah. That’s true. Jesus.

“I trust you,” Dean tells him, and that only makes it worse. Dean reaches forward, gripping Cas’ wrist in his hand and forcing the angel to look him in the eye. “Cas, I need you to promise me.”

Cas shakes his head and Dean grips tighter.

“Promise,” he insists. Miserable, Cas nods slowly. Dean deflates as relief courses through him. It’s going to be okay, because Cas is going to see him through if everything goes wrong. Even if he couldn’t do it last time, this time is different, and Cas gets that. It isn’t killing Dean, it’s killing Michael. Besides, Cas won’t be the one who has to do it this time, and it is just the worse case scenario.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Dean thinks to himself. That’s the only way you’ll psyche yourself up to say yes anyway.

“But I won’t have to,” Cas says, halfheartedly. “Because you’re going to come back to me- to us, I mean. It’s just for a little while.”

“Yes,” Dean promises Cas, and suddenly he can feel something foreign running through his veins. Power, electricity, and potential he never knew he had. He feels almost giddy on it despite the circumstances, and it almost doesn’t ring any warning bells that Michael took advantage of an overheard conversation to make his move. Cas stares at him in horror, and Dean smiles at him to be reassuring. “Still me.”

“Still you,” Cas says warily. “We should go.”

“You’re staying here,” Dean says. “I need someone to watch out for mom in case this goes sideways. Besides, you’ll just be one more person Lucifer can try to hurt to get me to back down. I’d rather you were safe.”

There’s nothing but relief on Cas’ face, but Dean knows it isn’t for lack of courage. Cas doesn’t want to see the worst case scenario. Lucifer is one thing, but this…

“When you’re finished, you come back,” Cas says again. “Or I will-“

“Kill me? Kinda counting on it,” Dean says. He can tell that Michael in his head is impatient to go, buzzing for his fight with Lucifer. Practically rabid at the mouth for it. Dean nods at Cas and steps back ready to leave.

And yet… before he goes he takes a step forward back into Cas’ space and grabs hold of his tie, kissing him just once. Cas stares at him wide eyed. Dean winks.

“I’m coming back-“ Dean freezes, and everything else freezes too. Suddenly he feels like he did when he was back on a movie set, as though he is acting out his life instead of living it. It isn’t real, just a dream.

“That isn’t how it happened,” Dean thinks to himself, thrown. Because he and Cas, they never- That wasn’t how they- “That isn’t how it happened. I wanted… but I left and then-“

“You know you’re really starting to piss me off,” says Michael back. Dean finds himself in a formless void of colors too bright to see. “I torture you, you won’t be quiet. I give you what you want, you won’t be quiet. And the fact I had to stoop so low as to fulfill that particular fantasy… You have no idea the kind of vile you are.”

“You could leave,” Dean thinks at him, trying to regain his grip on reality. Michael has already started to loosen it, and Dean tries to think of something to remind himself of what’s real and what isn’t. Anything to tell the difference.

“I’m just getting started,” Michael says. “You’ll break. Everyone breaks, and you Dean are no exception. You never have been.”

Dean finds himself alone in a motel room. He walks towards the door to open it and finds an identical motel room. He walks through five more before he gives up and lays back on the bed staring at the ceiling. There’s no way out, but Cas will come through. He has to.

**********

Everyone breaks.

Jack finds Cas the next morning, miserably clutching at his head while sitting in the back of his truck. Jack sits next to him and explains that he promised Sam and Mary that he would drive Cas home. Cas doesn’t resist. He doesn’t do much of anything, just sits in the passenger seat and watches the world go by.

When they get back to the bunker everyone turns to look at Cas. Cas stares back placidly. He tries for a smile, but if the disturbed looks on their faces are anything to go by it is not reassuring. sam pulls Cas aside for another talk, and Cas pretends to be heartened by it. He pretends that Sam has won him over and that they have a chance to see this through. At last, his family begins to relax. They begin to put aside grieving so they can get Dean back and keep him, like he has done so many times for all of them. Cas sits silently and listens to them, all the while wondering when he should start speaking to Jack. Start convincing.

He has a promise to keep. And after that… well, he gives up. On all of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from lyrics of Left Handed Kisses.


End file.
